City to renovate Franklinton facility, move Arena District services

Lucas Sullivan, The Columbus Dispatch

Tuesday

Sep 30, 2014 at 12:01 AMSep 30, 2014 at 4:14 PM

Columbus will spend $11 million to renovate a Franklinton industrial park in order to relocate some of its vital service departments that are taking up prime real estate on the outskirts of the Arena District. Members of the Columbus City Council unanimously approved $10.6 million last night to build a facility next to the Central Ohio Transit Authority site at 1355 McKinley Ave.

Columbus will spend $11 million to renovate a Franklinton industrial park in order to relocate some of its vital service departments that are taking up prime real estate on the outskirts of the Arena District.

Members of the Columbus City Council unanimously approved $10.6 million last night to build a facility next to the Central Ohio Transit Authority site at 1355 McKinley Ave.

Snowplows, code-enforcement, construction-management and a few other service departments that work near Downtown will be relocated there by late 2015.

The city also plans to partner with COTA to build a compressed natural-gas filling station there that both can use, said Adam Robins, the city’s deputy finance director.

“This is very exciting,” Councilwoman Priscilla R. Tyson said.

The city agreed to pay $880,000 for the property last year after threatening Hazelbaker Industrial Inc., the property owners, with eminent domain.

The city said Hazelbaker had backed out of a deal to sell the land, which is why the city started the eminent-domain action.

City Finance Director Paul Rakosky said at the time that the land would be used for city operations currently housed at 650 and 640 W. Nationwide Blvd. in the Arena District.

Robins said the city’s vacated property will be sold and redeveloped into commercial space, adding to a growing number of office buildings in and around the Arena District.

Gutknecht Construction initially turned in the lowest bid, at $10.2 million, but asked to withdraw because it inadvertently left out a contingency, according to the city legislation. Setterlin’s was the second-lowest bid of four received.

Capital-bond money is being used to finance the construction, which will begin in November.

Also last night, the city council approved about $331,000 to install 287 streetlights in the alleys of South Linden. Residents had requested the lights in hopes of making their neighborhood safer.

The money for the lights is coming from funds that the city sets aside for small neighborhood projects requested by residents, said Greg Davies, director of the city’s Utilities Department.

The city council also approved spending $340,000 to purchase a backup server to store video from police-cruiser cameras.

A few weeks ago, it was revealed that 31 of about 260 police cruisers surveyed had no memory left to store footage recorded by dashboard cameras.

That concerned officials at City Hall, who feared that officers would be left without evidence of their actions if there were a police shooting or another critical incident.

Police officials said they had known about the problem for some time and had been warned by police union officials, but they hadn’t thought storage would become an issue so quickly.

George Speaks, the city’s deputy safety director, said all cameras are now fully functional and there are no more storage issues.

lsullivan@dispatch.com

@DispatchSully

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